


Let’s Get Biblical

by lettered



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Religion, Religious Content, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-24
Updated: 2013-04-24
Packaged: 2017-12-09 09:12:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/772502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettered/pseuds/lettered
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place during 5x22, “Swan Song”, when Lucifer possesses Sam’s body.  Satan compares childhoods; Sam just wants him to go to hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let’s Get Biblical

**Author's Note:**

> Includes the Bible (mostly KJV but some NIV, for the sake of clarity), lines from SPN 5x22, and a Donne reference I wish I could’ve taken further, but it just didn’t work out.

“Oh, God. You got to go now. Come on! Go now, Sammy. Now!”

“I was just messing with you, Dean. Sammy’s long gone.”

†

(Forgive me, Father.)

“I have sinned,” says Satan with a grin. “It has been two hundred thousand years since _homo sapiens_.”

(My last confession.)

†

In the beginning my Father created my brother. He saw that he was good (with guns and knives and killing things); and that son he called, “soldier”.

Father and my brother created me. Father saw that I was good (with guns and knives and killing things, but also poetry and math, and having mother’s eyes), and me, this soldier, he called “son”.

As much as I have always loved my father (I still do), Father loved us back and left us ages at a time. In younger days I did not know why, and my elder brother cared for me until Father came back (he always did).

When I grew older I learned what my father fought. They are called Death and Darkness, and my brother fought them too. I saw that this was good, but there were times when I only longed for peace (to live to love to settle down, and let the Darkness be).

Once Father was gone for a week in the Milky Way (or maybe Minnesota), fathering another son with another Mother (on that final day). That son’s name was Adam, and though Father left him to his own devices; when we found out, I still knew the truth: Father loved him best.

Father left him with his Mother (Earth, a garden), like a safe house, sound. He gave Adam no knowledge; he told him nothing of the fight. He left him in the dark by leaving him in the Light he had crafted, just for him.

Father never made a light for my brother; he never created a world for me where I could just be safe, and I wanted that (take me out). I could have lived with infrequent visits, as Adam did (peanuts and cracker jacks). I could have lived in his absence, as Adam did (I don’t care if he ever gets back). You understand; I know you do: I would have _lived_ , if Father loved me as he did man.

As he loves you, Sam.

†

“I'm inside your grapefruit, Sam. You can't lie to me. I see it all: how odd you always felt, how out of place in that family of yours. And why shouldn't you have? I’m your real family.”

“No. That's not true.”

“It is. And I know you know it. All those times you ran away, You weren't running from them. You were running towards me.”

†

And the Lord God said unto the serpent, because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.

†

You remember, don’t you, the motel done up like a zoo; tiger stripes were on the wall, leopard print on all the beds and some sort of snakeskin curtain for the shower. There was a lamp that you were fond of: a lion and a lamb, and you were naming them in twos until Dean told you God killed all the unicorns. Dad was out and you were bored; you noticed that there was no dove.

Dean was nine, and on the table was Dad’s journal; he told you you could never read it. But you were learning words, and that night Dean went out to, you don’t know, buy some apples (you never knew). Curious, you went to the journal, picked a page. There were words like, “eyes” and “yellow”, and a scary drawing of a snake. You filled it in with crayon, and there were no words like, “ever after”, or like “love”.

When Dean got back, he was angry like you’d never seen him. “Dad told you not to,” he told you, trembling with rage, and it seemed strange to you, lover of literature at five years old, that some books should not be read (why then were they written?) Then you cried and seeing that, Dean caved. He never has been good at obeying edicts from above.

As you tried to dry your tears, he picked another page. Dean wasn’t supposed to read it either, but now you had he wanted to know too; he would always follow you. When Dad came home hours later, he could see it all: your head on Dean’s shoulder, the way his limbs tangled up with yours, the journal naked on his lap. Dean tried to hide it: close it, cover up, but Dean also sucked at lying, when push came down to shove.

You hung your heads in shame. “It’s my fault,” Dean said, but Dad knew it wasn’t, because it hardly ever was. “I read it to him.” Dad asked him why he’d done it, because his eldest son was supposed to be the good one; Dean just looked at you and said, “Dad, I think we need to buy him books. He likes them, or something,” as though wanting to know more about the world was unheard of.

Dad still punished both of you, the most grounded you ever got. When you said sorry, Dean said, “Why couldn’t you at least have been reading those magazines Dad hides?” and proceeded to pick out Hardy Boys, Heinlein and Gaston Leroux from libraries.

†

“It’s good to see you, Michael.”

“You too. It’s been too long. Can you believe it’s finally here?”

“No. Not really.”

†

But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not himself dare to condemn him for slander but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”

†

You remember, don’t you, Sammy, the little banshee brat: she was six or seven, maybe; you found her beside a burning barrel, huddled beside a shepherd dog. Her Seven Eleven Slurpee poured out red as blood and the dog lapped it like a river, though her eyes were desert eyes, starving, eating up her face. Her nose was broken like a Sphinx, and she feared all men.

You had heard her scream; it meant death and you were only sixteen. Looking at her locust wrists, her frog-shaped hips, her legs like staffs that wobbled and turned slippery when you found her, you knew you couldn’t kill her, and you knew what Dean would say: “It’s you or her Sam.” Dean would say it was the end; Dean would say amen.

When Dean caught up to you in the alley, bush fire in the trashcan, he was twenty-one and more angry then you’d ever seen him. He could see how you felt for the waif, how you’d given her your jacket and the last package of crackers in your pocket. Dean told you she had to die; she was a monster. All you said was, “Maybe she is. But you know, for once, I want to be a man.”

Dean looked at the banshee, chewing wafers, drinking your kindness up like wine, he did not dispute you. As though he did not know how to rebuke you, he just said, “Dad told us to do it.” You told Dean that banshees were not killers, merely presaged death, and you thought that you could raise her up as you were never raised. You thought that you could offer her your hand again.

Dean did not know what you meant; he spoke of expectation, of orders, and of faith. You challenged his assumption, that she was a creature who belonged to anyone; you asked about free will instead of fate. Dean just shook his head and said, “Dad knows best;” you said, “Fuck what Dad says. I need to get her somewhere safe. Are you going to help me? I can’t do this alone, man.”

Dean looked at you and he looked at her, but mostly he saw you. He bowed his head and said, “Okay. Fine. You fucking win. Just tell me what to do.”

†

“I’m a good son, and I have my orders.”

“But you don’t have to follow them.”

“What, you think I’m gonna rebel? Now? I’m not like you.”

“Please, Michael—”

“Gunter, glieben, glauchen, globen.”

†

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

†

You remember don’t you, Sammy, that time that Dean came back from Hell. For you it was four months, but Hell is like a desert, and a desert is like a flood, and a flood is like a garden in which you cannot eat. In forty years of naming things and counting flocks of sheep, Adam never saw a dove; Moses never went to sleep; and Dean never once made love.

You watched him wolf down four or five burgers, milkshakes, pie, and after he was still hungry. His skin was hot to touch and his voice sounded sandy; saliva came like a deluge in his dry mouth. You gave him all your wine to drink; you’d stopped drinking his whiskey when you started drinking blood. You gave him bread from your last supper, before Ruby first opened up her flesh.

Emptiness still grew inside his eyes; they always were the color of a garden. You would have given him your flesh; you would have given him your blood. That, I have learned, is the best way to tempt humans: kingdoms don’t count and nor do angels. Show him what to eat and give him all of yourself, and when he’s gone for long enough without he’ll need to know you inside out.

Dean was tempted; he was sorely tempted. He watched you sleep; he longed to touch you. You don’t know what it is to dream in a desert, forty years, for freedom; you, you’re family. You’re the tallest drink of water and the warmest loaf of bread; you’re the sight of land. You are whiskey, apple pie; you are Mom and Dad and the promised, starved-for home.

But a guy can’t live on flesh and blood alone, and Dean denied himself. That year you drank power and to you it tasted just like peace; in red you saw a resolution; in Lilith’s death you hoped to bring the birth of a life you should have always had, without fear and without fighting. All those things, you would give to Dean, if only he would let you go. This second time it was much easier for Dean to deny you; he could just say no.

Now you’ve been set upon a pinnacle, from which you’ll cast yourself down. You thought that finally you would convince him, for it was not written that angels would bear you up, but it was whispered in his ear that he should cause you to fall.

No such luck. Dean’s here.

†

“Hey. We need to talk.”

“Dean. Even for you, this is a whole new mountain of stupid.”

“I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to Sam.”

†

And where the hell is Jesus Christ in this confession, you’re probably asking: my father’s other other son—my brother known as man, for all of you are one. I walked with him in a desert once, but failed to find his weakness, each offer further disdained. My brother tried the same thing in a garden—my brother who is an angel and agony, named Michael, in a garden or a grave named Gethsamane.

Man is the favored son, so I’m told, for his forgiveness; your brother hung upon a cross and he forgave you. He forgave you for what I have done to you, for the fruit I’ve given you, for how I’ve tempted you. He forgave you and your sons, and all the sons hereafter for doing what you want and being who you are, and maybe that’s the whole difference between me and you: I know exactly what I do.

Man’s love is powerful, I have always thought, because my father wills it so. Look at Abraham, John Winchester; just look at Jesus Christ. Christ did not know you, because he never did know me; he would rather die than love you as you are. When Jesus said, “I am willing,” in the garden, I thought it was because it was his father’s bidding. He didn’t die to love you, but to follow a decree.

It’s so easy to tell myself that’s what you’re doing, Sammy. No matter how you batter my heart, you are a son and brother; you have the spirit of a man. Your father said that you should have died, and my father condemned me to fall; you just want to obey. It’s easy to tell myself that even your brother has betrayed you; after all, Michael told our father’s favorite son to commit suicide.

But of course, that isn’t what Dean’s saying. He’s saying, “Sammy, it’s okay. It’s okay. I’m here. I’m not gonna leave you. I’m not gonna leave you.”

_I forgive you._

†

Prophets will write that you follow your heart. They will say your soul does overcome; love for your brother triumphs over all. Gospels will go on about gasoline, green army men and home; they will say such human things. Greater love hath no man, they will say, and think man’s love is a weapon that won them a war. Your race has always been so self-involved.

They will all forget that Dean was supposed to be Michael. They’ll forget that these are supposed to be my brother’s lips, saying, “I won’t leave you;” these are supposed to be my brother’s eyes, saying, “I still love you;” this is supposed to be my brother’s body, held in mine, broken, bleeding, beaten by forgiving me.

But this isn’t Michael, and Dean doesn’t speak to me. He speaks to you, who’s always been best loved. Sam, you already have so much forgiveness; you have my father and you have Michael; you have Jesus Christ. When he hung there by nails pierced through his hands, it seemed so universal, impersonal, his general love of man, and I just didn’t get it.

Sam, you won’t win because your love is greater. You will win because for a moment, just a moment, I feel forgiven, and I feel loved, and that’s when I finally understand: this is why my father best loves man.

You win because for a moment I do love you, my brother, Sam.


End file.
